The One That Got Away
by LyrebirdSong
Summary: Someone's been in Victor's territory and he is not happy about it. It's only going to get worse.
1. Chapter 1

The one that got away

To: The Big Guy That's Been Hunting Me,

First, don't feel bad about not catching me and killing me or whatever it is you Big Hunter-types like to do. Turns out us Small Hunter-types are good at hiding and getting away from trouble when we think it's dangerous.

And Big Guy, you practically exude dangerous. It, like, spills out of your pores or something. Surrounds the air around you. Like a coat made out of a bear.

So, I knew I was in trouble the moment you got a whiff of me in the bar. Which I shouldn'ta been in anyway, but that's beside the point.

But, what you gotta understand is that I don't know what I am doing here.

I mean, I know what I _want_ to be doing. I know what's in my nature – I am curious to a fault and like to play with stuff to figure it out – but I've been trying to figure out how to do this whole mutant-turns-out-I'm-almost-a-fox thing for a few years now. Shit, I've been going to the library to figure out if the weird urges I have are normal growing-up human things or a normal growing-up fox things. Like my other dens – you'll find 'em if you haven't already (but how many do I have, Big Guy?). Turns out foxes like to have a few places to bed down during the day. Only they don't normally do it by themselves. They have other fox-family to have fun with.

Who knew, right? I thought I was going cray, but it turns out that behavior is super normal.

Speaking of which, can you do me a solid and return the library books I got in my dens? I don't want to rack up a fine :)

But I digress.

My point is that I'm still learning and I didn't know I was in your territory. I swear. Like, how would I even know that? It's not like I can just walk into town and know that it's part of some scary predator's territory. You didn't put a sign up that said "Big Predator's Territory" or pee on building or whatever so really, if you look at the situation properly, it's your fault that you got your panties in a twist.

If I'd known that I would of stayed away. Pinky promise!

So I've made a decision that will result in you having one less intruder and me having some time to stay alive.

I'm moving out and on. Getting myself right out of your hair. Or is it fur?

Let me give you some space to revel in that bit of info:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

There do you feel better?

I know I do :)

Seriously though Big Guy, I do. This whole thing has been exhausting. And not just the time that you've been aware that I exist (though, as I mentioned before, you are super intimidating, and I think I am getting an ulcer from the stress of being hunted by you. Did I write hunted? I am losing it entirely). I mean the last few years I've constantly been overwhelmed by all of the things that I wasn't aware of _before_. I don't know how you made it through the perfume department with my scent still in your nose but it made me nauseous just running through there. And I wasn't trying to sort through all the smells and the people and the music and… well, you were there. You know how it was. I thought I was being clever too… my fox-self was pretty pleased when I thought of it. And my fox-self and I haven't felt pleased in a while. I live in a state of constant anxiety.

The fact is… I don't want to die. I've spend so much time trying not to die that I haven't even lived.

So do you think you can suppress your violent predator-ness for a few weeks or years or decades so that I can try and do that? Live I mean. Please? With a cherry on top? Thanks.

M

PS

This was rolled up and stuffed into the only thing I have of value. You can keep it or pawn it (Get it, paw-n it. LAWL). Consider it rent or something.

...

Victor snarled and scrunched the paper into his fist. The little bitch had got away again. He had come close to catching her three times in the past day and a half and the fury of having missed her again made him want to tear out someone's eyes through their chest.

He pulled deep breaths in through his nose and focused on burning her scent into his brain. Easily done since this was clearly her primary living space. He _had_ found her other dens before but they weren't as lived in as this one. They lacked the sentimental things that this one had.

He crouched down over the sleeping bag and drew her scent into his nose again.

He stood, pocketing the bracelet that had originally been wrapped around the letter and studied the items that littered the tiny space. He snarled again when he found the discarded bus timetable.

He hated this shithole town.

* * *

Author's note - found this on the ol' 'puter recently. Let me know what you thought!


	2. Chapter 2

_Dear Diary or Journal or whatever,_

 _Why do you have to be called "Diary"? Why can't you just be called Daniel or Dixie or something, like a real name? Not that Dixie is a real name._

 _Dixie sounds like a stripper or something, yeah?_

 _You're not a stripper are you, Diary?_

 _You dirty thing._

 _Actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with stripping. Dixie actually was a stripper, and she had an apartment and a car and everything, so it can't be too bad, right? Like, if you want to shake your ass and get men to part with their hard earned dosh then who am I to stop you?_

 _Dixie's real name was Cherry Pie Rennolds._

 _I know, right, Cherry Pie! Probably worse than Dixie to be completely honest. I heard once that to figure out your stripper name you should get your first pet's name and the street you grew up on smoosh them together._

 _In my case my stripper name is Snowy Willow. Snowy was my scruffy black cat. And I grew up on Willow Tree Road._

 _I don't think I am doing this right._

 _I was told to write in a diary because it would help me "work through my issues" and help with my English Comprehension or something. I don't think Miss Grey really meant that I should be talking about a stripper who'd lived in both England and New England and made more money in a weekend than I made in a whole summer babysitting._

 _Anywho. I should probably talk about something else. I guess I will tell you about my roommates. I don't really want to tell you how I got here. That is a tale for another time, my dear diary. And first impressions are important, so here are my first impressions of my roommates._

 _So there's just the three of us in this room._

 _First there is Rogue, or Anna Marie, who refuses to answer to anything other than Rogue. She is a jumpy little thing who wears gloves all the time and has a weird fascination with one of our not-professors._

 _I say not-professors because he 'teaches' shop and physical education but doesn't seem to have any kind of teacher training or patience or drive to be a real teacher. He doesn't even set homework. I don't think he wants to grade anything. I don't know what Rogue's mutation is but its probably something to do with her skin. She keeps covered up. Like super covered. I wonder if she has any tan lines._

 _Kitty Pride can phase through walls which is super unnerving, by the way. She smells like rosehips because she keeps this really old fashioned hand cream in her bedside table and puts it on every night before bed and then again after her morning shower. She smells like an old lady._

 _I won't bang on about their looks. Professor Manh says that good writers should 'show not tell' so I will just pick you up and point you at Kitty and Rogue when they come back in – this is the designated homework hour so they shouldn't be long._

 _Hmmm. What else should I tell you?_

 _I don't know, of all the - wait, Kitty just came out of the bathroom and Rogue just came back from wherever. She has a small smile on her face like she's keeping some kind of special little secret._

 _So there you go! That's what they look like, the one with the short brown hair is Kitty and the one with the long hair with the weird white streaky bit is Rogue._

 _They both looked at me like I was going crazy for a minute there. But Kitty's now doing an essay and Rogue's back to smiling secretly._

 _Ugh. Diary writing is hard._

 _Do you think Miss Jean Grey will know if I skip tomorrow? I think she reads minds so probably, yeah?_

 _Anyway, I better do my English assignment. I have to write a page answering the question "What are three of your most profound learning experiences? Where and when did they occur?"_

 _Also, should I be honest and write the actual answer, the kind that would make Professor Grey's eyebrows turn up in the middle o_ _r should I lie and make something up that sounds plausible or is true but I don't really care about?_

 _Also, how am I supposed to write a whole page on that?_

 _Professor Manh must be losing it._

 _Ni-night Diary._

Matilda 'Tilda' Matthews stretched her arms up at the ceiling and decided that living at the Xavier Institute wasn't so bad. Her anxiety had definitely calmed down some and after somehow running into Big Hunter guy in two separate cities, she was quite glad to be somewhere where there were so many people around who could keep him away from her. If he ever encountered her again. Not that she'd ever tell anyone that.

The flip side of being comfortable was having adults who were sometimes a little too kind. In a patronizing kind of way, like she was made of glass or something. Miss Grey made Tilda's head ache a little and Professor X was kind and distracted and she got the impression that he was paying attention to other things when they'd had their obligatory 'Welcome to the Institute, what are your plans?' chat.

But, it was a small price to pay for three square meals and roof that didn't leak. Plus, she thought she might actually quite like the girls in her room. Rogue was quiet but had a pent up energy, like she wanted desperately to have a slumber party or let loose or something.

And Kitty seemed like a fun type of person.

Tilda felt like the first couple of weeks she'd spent here were the start of something real. And that, she found to be exciting.

She'd thought she'd been going crazy when she'd been approached by the geography teacher of all people. When he told her that he could take her somewhere safe where she'd be warm and fed she'd run away as fast as she could because she was a teenage girl who'd been somewhat successful at living on her own.

The next time they sent Professor Gray and a student and took her to lunch first.

After a few days of medical tests and settling in she'd started classes and was happy to be around people her own age again.

"Oy, Rogue, how's Bobby," Kitty interrupted Tilda's thoughts with a sly look at the other girl.

"Oooh, a boy!" Tilda joined in and watched as Rogues cheeks went pink, "Do tell!"

"There's nothing really to say," the embarrassed girl hedged.

"Nuh uh girl," Kitty said, with a wink at Tilda "He was giving you gooey eyes."

"He was not!" Rogue cried.

"Oh is, Bobby the blonde with the blue eyes? All frozen or something?" Tilda asked and Kitty nodded, "Oh yeah, he was totally checking you out. He is super into you."

Rogue covered her face in her hands and let her head fall to her desk.

"If I tell you will you let me get on with my Geography homework?"

"Why, Rogue, darling," Kitty said, flinging some imaginary hair over her shoulder, "of course."

Rogue took her head off her desk and feigned a stern expression before covering her cheeks.

"He asked me if I wanted to study with him tomorrow night,"

Kitty started laughing.

"Oh! Do you think it means something?" Rogue gasped.

"Oh honey," Kitty laughed, "Everyone'll be watching the start of the new season of Come at Me tomorrow night, you'll both have a lot of privacy in the library."

Tilda smiled as Rogue covered her cheeks with gloved hands again.

"Oh my gosh, you'll have to help me figure out what to wear!"

Kitty laughed and said that she would as soon as her math homework was done.

The three girls turned back to their work again until Kitty interrupted again.

"Can anyone tell me why Professor Manh makes us ruin a perfectly good movie with the perfectly good Ryan Gosling in it by making us write an essay on it? I never want to watch Remember the Titans again."

 _Yeah_ , Tilda thought, _life could be a lot worse right now._

* * *

 _A/N Big thank-you to everyone who read the last chapter! Your reviews made me think this through and I pretty much have a full story outlined now. I like getting into the speech patterns of Matildaand I hope you enjoyed reading this!_


	3. Chapter 3

_What are three of your most profound learning experiences? Where and when did they occur?_

 _Tilda Matthews_

 _For an experience to be profound it needs to have been very great or intense and to have been an experience to do with learning it would have required a person to have acquired knowledge or skills through experience, study and/or by being taught. Therefore a profound learning experience would have been knowledge acquired through an intense encounter with something. I have had many intense or very great experiences and have acquired a lot of knowledge through experiencing them. Almost none of these have been via a teacher, which begs the question, if a person can learn profound things without them, what is the purpose of teachers?_

 _When I was a little girl, before the fox came out to play in my biology, I was a member of a family with two parents and three siblings. My first profound learning experience was in this environment. Before this experience, I thought that my older brother was merely annoying. Up until this point it was small things, like popping my balloons at my birthday party, or eating all the chocolate ice cream in the chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream container. He did this until he was sick once. I realized my brother was an ass when he gave me a kitten for my birthday. This would normally be a nice gesture, giving a child her first pet to look after. The kitten was scruffy and black with yellow eyes. I planned to call the cat Sooty. Unimaginative perhaps, but I was seven. My jerkoff brother waited until I voiced this desire to tell me that he had already trained the cat to only answer to Snowy. This took seven weeks in which he hid the cat in his room and gave it treats when it responded to Snowy. Which, now that I am older, I recognize as a remarkable show of determination for a 9 year old. This was a jerk move in many ways but mainly because kids are little shits and when it got around that I black cat named Snowy, they started teasing me about it. Until my brother overheard some kids calling me stupid and knocked one of their teeth out gave the other black eye. He then walked me home with his arm over my shoulder. What did I learn from this? Two things, one my brother was determined to prank me on significant life events. And two, only family is allowed to hurt you. This learning came from experience._

 _When the fox came out and I started accidentally hurting people, being generally weird and sometimes on purpose hurting people, I ran away. My second profound learning experience came from a library. Libraries are warm and full of information about camping and weather patterns and how to fix things. They also have the internet, where I learned that 24 hour gyms have showers and are mainly frequented by new mums in the weird times of night. I read a lot of books, which may surprise some teachers because they just look at me and assume that I am stupid or have a third grade reading level and need to write stupid assignments to catch up. I learned about how my instincts were based on foxes and I learned a bit about how foxes map their worlds with scent and I learned a lot about the psychology of anxiety. This learning came from experience and study._

 _My final profound learning experience came from a specific teacher. Don't get excited, I don't think he realized that I was learning anything. He taught me that you shouldn't let your guard down, that you should always have at least three escape routes and you should probably learn not to be a smart ass to huge feral hunters because they don't think it's cute at all. I had run ins with this guy two, almost three, times. The first I had just turned was 15 and had no real idea what I was doing, I thought I did, but he taught me otherwise. The second time was 16 and on my rag for the first time so I was panicking for an entirely different reason and then I catch his scent as he catches mine and was able to track me stupidly well. I had to actually swim across a river before I got to a bus stop that was not just looping around his neighborhood and would actually take me ought of town. This taught me to go to an actual city and that pads will soak up water if you're swimming with one in. The third time, I caught his scent around one of my dens and that was the day before one of your lot found me so I jumped at the chance to get the hell out of dodge._

 _The three learning experiences described above have had profound effect on me for different reasons which should be obvious as you've literally just read them and my hand is sore._

 _Professor Manh's notes: See me after class._

* * *

Victor had found all of the fox-girl's dens and none of them had been lived in or been disturbed for at least two weeks given the layer of dust and the state of the bugs on the discarded food. None had been cleared out even a little, which she'd at least attempted last time he'd caught a whiff of her on the wind.

After her first note Victor had decided that he would find her and teach her a lesson. He almost regretted scaring her so badly the first time - as she was learning to escape him with greater efficiency. Hindsight was 20:20, he supposed.

He'd been in a bar closing up a deal when he'd heard a cry of indignation from a wannabe gangsters piece of tail at losing her purse. Then he'd caught the scent of feral and seen a bushy ponytail weave through the crowd. His instinctual growl of warning had been heard and he'd been pleased to note the cloying scent of fear seep into her woodsy, sweaty smell.

Then she'd managed to lose him by taking into account her small stature and the way that security guards went on edge as soon as he entered their presence.

The second time he'd seen her across a crowded street and she'd actually looked at the sky and said, 'God, can't you just do me a solid and smite him down with lightning already, or fuck up his hair? Nothing?" And then she'd realized he'd heard her and darted off into women only gym which had heavier security than he'd wanted to deal with. He'd run round the back to catch her as she escaped but she'd ducked back out the front door as soon as he'd left.

He'd managed to track her to two dens before he'd lost her at the river which divided the commercial hub in half.

Victor furrowed his brow and bared his teeth as he came to a conclusion.

The girl had to have been taken by someone.

After three years of having her scent in his nose and at the fore front of his mind Victor didn't like this.

He snarled and fisted a sweater that had been left folded on top of a box. He drew her scent in again, noting the changes that came with age.

He didn't know what he'd do with the girl when he found her but she was _his_.

Victor picked up a few of the things that she'd left behind and packed them into a box.

He saw her first, and he would get her back.

And then he'd figure out what he'd do with her.

* * *

Author's note: Thanks so much for your reviews everyone! And a special thanks to DreamerByHeart, PeinVPuppy, Rayeslight334, Nevermorea, kanna-yamamoto, thewordmajestic, JacCrowe, BlackMoonWhiteSky, NightStalkerblade, ironwho97 and larnie for adding this to their favorite/follows lists. I sincerely appreciate the encouragement.


End file.
